Location-based services continue to be integrated into countless applications for mobile computing devices to deliver better and smarter services to users. The location information of the mobile computing devices can be obtained through numerous methods, such as using cellular tower identification, Wi-Fi and/or Bluetooth signals, internet protocol (IP) based geocoding, and/or global positioning systems (GPS). The numerous ways in which an application of a mobile computing device can obtain the location of the mobile computing device poses significant challenges with respect to protecting the confidentiality of a user's location.
Social media applications may leak a user's location either intentionally or unintentionally through, for example, user error, user interface designs, and/or other mechanisms. For example, a user may intentionally allow an application to access the location of the mobile computing device for a particular purpose (e.g., finding a nearby restaurant) and also unknowingly permit the application to access the location of the mobile computing device at any time in the future without permission. After doing so, the user may not have the technological savvy to manually change the location access settings. Alternatively, a user may unintentionally select an option to permit an application to obtain the location of the mobile computing device.